Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology is being globally used. Driven by the market needs, subsequent WLAN protocol standards have be defined for medium access control and physical layer. IEEE released the original 802.11 protocol, RFC5416 in 1997 and up to six more versions have been published until then aimed to increase both the capacity and the signal coverage distance. In 2014, 802.11ad is published to provide a theoretical maximum data throughput of up to 7.0 Gbps.
Consumer broadband Internet access technologies is experimenting a notable slowing down in new breakthroughs. The new ADSL2++ (52.0 Mbps downstream rate) is still in development. Although the fibre technology provides an alternative, the higher infrastructure deployment cost makes it less attractive for ISPs.
Several methods try solving this situation by bundling the capacity of individual network links to create a single connection that is more performing and/or more resilient to failure.
Previous methods can aggregate backhaul connectivity using wireless links. Descriptions of aspects such as multiple connections with a single radio such as the method described in patent application WO-A1-2012/034702, or by means of a fair WLAN backhaul aggregation [1] has been described. [1] “Fair WLAN Backhaul Aggregation”, Domenico Giustiniano, Eduard Goma, Alberto Lopez Toledo, P. Rodriguez, ACM/MOBICOM'10, September 2010.
In order to coordinate and improve the resulting service, other patents are focused on aspects such as determining the most appropriate association of stations and access points EP-B1-2263398 or the metrics required to compute and determine which associations result in improved service U.S. Pat. No. 8,442,003.
Other works have described centralised architectures that can coordinate a network of access points WO-A2-2006099025 but does not focus on aggregation of backhaul bandwidth. Furthermore, other works focus on the algorithms required for AP association US-A1-2006064497.
In many of the previous cases, links are enabled or disabled to react to changes in connectivity, that is, one of the links is down and needs to be replaced by another one. Cases where the target is creating a faster connection will mostly rely on aggregating bandwidth from various links that are permanently attached to the device.